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The EU claims to be the guardian of a democratic confederacy, and treats Serbia as beyond the pale. So why appease Italy?
As belly dancers go, she was very pretty. I suggested that the dignity of the Italian state could find a crumb of comfort in that. The Italian to whom I said it was not amused. "Please, let's not even discuss it," she said. "It's too awful. I am too ashamed."
The Italian prime minister might face prosecution for buying sex from a minor, but a man is innocent until proved guilty. I therefore persisted in my attempt at consolation. What could be nobler in a Roman than to "take pity" on a poverty-stricken 17-year-old Moroccan beauty who turns up at his bunga-bunga party claiming to be the grand-daughter of his old friend, Mubarak of Egypt? What was more natural than a sudden urge to put his hand in his trouser pocket and extract €7,000, a diamond necklace and a free Audi? What is a prime minister for?
The poor girl, who must have reassured the saintly Berlusconi by giving her name as "Ruby the Heartstealer", later called him from a police station. Was it not statesmanlike of him to order her immediate release into the caring guardianship of a local Brazilian prostitute? He was concerned at the possibility of an "international diplomatic incident". As the girl so wisely said – her predecessor having had trouble with the mafia – there was no sex between them. She had merely "made a deep impression on sweet Silvio", and he on her.
In a breathtaking parody of Lord Gnome, Berlusconi even presented himself as a latter-day Gladstone: his enemies had failed to recognise his deeply philanthropic instincts. Had not one of his family newspapers reported that the girl was really 18, so it was OK? Italians should also know that, to a devout Catholic, "bunga bunga, striptease and sex play" does not mean sex. So-called "observant Catholic" readers of Christian Family magazine gave him a 50:50 benefit of the doubt. The whole business was a sad distraction, said the prime minister, from his ambition "to spend time going round the world building hospitals for children".
Google "Berlusconi" and "prostitute" and you get a million-and-a-half links. The list would exhaust a Leporello. Google the same for David Cameron and you get a measly 65, all anodyne. (For the record, Sarkozy of France scores 5.7m.) There have always been problems in the conceptual tussle between a "public interest" in the privacy of celebrities and prurient curiosity. In the mid-1990s, any newspaper editor seeking to protect Princess Diana's privacy was on a hiding to nothing. Trivia went through the office like a hurricane. Once a story acquires a degree of prominence, it is beyond "public interest" and into raging nationwide obsession.
Berlusconi's nocturnal antics have appeared, until now, to be within the terms of Italian law, which mysteriously regards the age of sexual consent as 14, but paying for sex with someone under 18 as illegal. Berlusconi has been protected, as in his business dealings, by various statutory immunities attaching to his office. These have begun to collapse following constitutional amendments. Now he is in deep trouble. Some 800 pages of evidence are said to present a prima facie case of illegal sex with minors. Even the most ardent champions of personal privacy cannot hold back the tidal wave of revelation deluging the print and electronic media.
There is much-cited evidence that Berlusconi's political standing is still robust. This is attributed to a potent mix of Italian machismo, an absence of political opposition and the prime minister's ownership of the bulk of television and much of the press. His popularity rating, down from 40% to 35%, is still ahead of most European leaders with recessions on their hands. He has survived one parliamentary vote of censure and may yet survive another.
This is all ostensibly Italy's business. What reasonably concerns Britons is the methods that have allowed Berlusconi to protect himself for 16 years from charges of corruption and personal disgrace. He is the head of a senior European government. He is a member of a council of ministers with majority voting and supranational institutions with increasing sovereignty over the British parliament and people. His party, aptly named People of Freedom, is under his thumb, through a patronage web that would do credit to Robert Walpole, and is a rebuke to list-based proportional representation. He controls most of the media and is widely reported as having cut a deal with the mafia to protect his family, for which the quid pro quo can only be guessed.
Last week he sought to bolster his position by a series of giveaway reforms. These included dropping EU social chapter obligations on employers and offering extensive fiscal autonomy to the provinces of the Northern League, relieving it of the need to subsidise the south. The latter will be offered "deregulation", reportedly strengthening the existing grip of mafia families on its economy. If passed, the package could signal a partial disintegration of the Italian state. That is what happens when a leader is on the run and there are inadequate means of redress.
Berlusconi's Italy shows how futile are the protestations of the European Union that it is a bulwark against anti-democratic forces and a beacon of rectitude to the outside world. Those who know and love Italy have long recognised it as a wholly different political culture from those of northern Europe. Business in the south remains in thrall to organised crime. A European commission that meticulously intervenes in Britain's hospital shifts, its cod quotas and its paternity leave turns a blind eye to Italy's institutional corruption and regulatory abuse. It ignores rigged markets in everything from Sicilian tomatoes to Roman tour operators and mafia property speculators, on whom Europe's taxpayers must have splurged hundreds of unaudited millions of euros over the years. The EU has done nothing to aid the work of brave Italians who have struggled for years to update their country's political economy, and much to undermine them.
The reason Italy has endured Berlusconi for so long is because it lacks a constitution capable of curbing him. This should worry European bodies such as the EU, the Council of Europe, the OECD and others, who boast that they are guardians of a sophisticated democratic confederacy, and treat countries such as Turkey and Serbia as beyond the pale. The EU's appeasement of Italian governments has always been excused as in the wider interest of European unity.
We tell Egypt how to run itself. We tell Israel how to run itself. We tell Palestine how to run itself. We tell half the world how to run itself. When did David Cameron or William Hague, or any British politician, last lecture Berlusconi on his blatant failings, given that he is part of the same political realm as the rest of us?
Instead we lap up the gossip, giggle at Italian machismo, joke about the mafia, shrug that "Italy is Italy". We say it cannot be judged by the standards of the rest of Europe, while the means by which Berlusconi survives are Mediterranean exoticism. If I were not paying for it, I might agree. I am paying for it and I do not agree.